When I first posted this website, in December 1995, I never imagined it would grow to what is has become in 2015. I certainly didn’t imagine it would last this long. While some pages have come and gone, the focus of the site has remained – to provide the best information I can about the subjects that I have studied about Southern California. The initial scope of the site was only the Santa Clarita Valley, a smaller area north of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County. My initial idea was to write about the local geology and history, as at that time, there was no information online about those subjects. The site itself predates most of the Internet sites we all use today. Google, Facebook, WordPress, Twitter, Instapress, and more all came after this site which is something I didn’t quite realize until recently. Yes, I’ve had a web presence since before these sites existed yet didn’t know about it until recently. It just never came up. Mind you, all of those sites are far more popular and making money, but I never posted this site for that. I simply wanted to share my knowledge, something that the Internet does quite well.
In the intervening years, I’ve added many pages and expanded the focus. My highway pages are some of the most popular on the site, with my US 99 and US 6 tours being the only page of its kind and at such length. The US 6 tour covers over 350 miles of highway by itself. I sometimes look back at these pages, updating them as I go, and realize that I have written quite a bit of information. My geology pages are recognized by the USGS and the California Geological Survey, something that only makes me want to work harder on them.
The name and even the domain have also changed since 1995. When this site began, it was basically a “Home Page” with local Santa Clarita information. As a result, it had a rather clunky address “http://www.smartlink.net/~mapmaker”. This address proved to be a problem at times when it came to newspapers wanting to post the address. Few seemed to be able to manage to interpret the tilde properly. This problem pushed me to buy my own domain in 2001, changing the site name and address to “http://www.scvresources.com”, which was named the “Santa Clarita Valley Resources Page”, as the site was still focused there. This would be the domain of the site until its most recent change and combination of the San Diego page in early 2014.
Today, in 2015, the site stands out as a resource for the whole of Southern California. It covers geology, highways, history, kayaking, wineries, railroads, and bicycling. It also has pages of photographs of the City of San Diego, my home since 2005. I am quite proud of the site and look forward to the next 20 years online. It has been quite a journey so far with so much more to add, so much more to teach, so much more to learn.
Thank you, readers, for the encouragement and help that you have all given me these past 20 years.